zulubuff

The Blessing of Debt?

2012-01-30T10:40:00.000-06:00

I know that the subject of debt is a controversial topic within the Christian community. My thoughts on the subject are that debt causes one to be in a master servant relationship with the debtor and the Bible says you cannot serve two masters. Additionally, tithing becomes an issue because when you are in debt as you are essentially borrowing your tithe. It makes things a bit of a mess, and I’m sure God is not as black and white as this as the tithe is really a heart matter. As a full disclosure, I do still have mortgage debt, so I sit in the pit as I offer this judgment. I hate this debt and wish to be rid of it. While the home has served us well, I don’t feel that the debt to get into the house has been a blessing.

Recently at church, I overheard a conversation from a person describing the miracle that was their low interest rate on their new car. I was immediately drawn into the conversation as my own debt experience caused me to shudder. This person went on to say that they thought they would have to pay a higher rate and that the dealer was so nice to let them take the keys to the car and drive it home that night even though the rate wasn’t locked in yet. So as they drove home falling in love with their car, they were hoping that a miracle would happen. And when they came in the next day, it did. They received the blessing of financing a vehicle over several years with interest. First of all, the dealer did no favor to the couple by letting them drive home with the car before a contract was signed. They were simply duped. The dealer knows that if they let you fall in love with the car, you will become emotionally attached to the thing and will be less prudent when you come in the next day to negotiate the actual loan. The finance manager did not need to wait to get approval. If that couple said they were going to walk out and find a place that could get them approval, he would definitely have found the approval for the loan right then and there, but that is a side note.

The message that was spoken by this couple was that through that process, God blessed them with this newly financed vehicle. Since I don’t believe God bless through debt, I asked myself instead, was this an attack by the enemy rather than a blessing from God. I believe it to be the ladder. Does God bless us through bondage or freedom. A financed blessing is bondage, not freedom. This bondage will affect this couple’s finances, ability to bless people, and affect their marriage. From my personal experience, I can remember how excited I was to get a car loan to get that blessing of a car. That blessing turned into curse. Similarly, while having my house is great, because I am in debt, I cannot easily sell my house and buy one that better fits my family’s needs. We are stuck in a small box because we are upside down in our loan. Did God bless me with this stress, or is only through His grace that I am able to deal with my mistake. When my wife and I learned our lesson about debt, we truly were blessed with a car. This car was wholly given to us with no bondage. It was the most beat up vehicle I have ever driven, but it was my favorite car because it truly was a blessing. The two vehicles we have purchased since then have also been a blessing as we bought them outright. They have worked out great and come without bondage. When I compare the feeling I had with any vehicle I have financed compared with the feeling I have had with unfinanced vehicles, I can easily say where I truly felt blessed, and where I felt enslaved. What if the loan didn’t cause too much hardship at all, could that loan be a blessing. I think in that situation, you have to ask yourself what would have happened if you lost your job. How would you view that car loan in that circumstance. If I owned a car outright and lost my job, I would absolutely call it a blessing. If I had an outstanding loan, I would likely lament the loan. I can think of nothing more American than the Americanization of blessing, as only in America would we call debt a blessing. We live in the kingdom of God not of America, so let’s parse out our blessings accordingly.

The Prodigal Son in the Entitlement Era

2012-01-03T14:47:00.000-06:00

This parable is one of the most well-known of those told by Christ. The parable is about two sons relationships with their father. The younger son decides to take his inheritance early, disgracing the family. He squanders the money and ends up tending pigs. As he can go no lower, he decides to seek after his father’s forgiveness. As the son has turned back to the father, the father removes his shoes and runs to greet his son that has returned home. The son offers to do works for the father, but the father lets him know that there are no works needed, all he had to do was come home. The father puts a ring on his finger and robe on him. He has the finest calf slaughtered for a banquet to celebrate that the son has returned home to the father. Now this parable is actually more about the obedient son’s response to the father than the rebellious sons, but that isn’t the point of this article. Rather, I am postulating on what might the younger sons response have been after he squandered his inheritance had he lived in an entitlement or safety-net society.
Suppose this happened today. The son is penniless, perhaps he impregnated a girl, or fell into drugs. Maybe he invested the money in day trading and lost it all. In today’s society of entitlements and bailouts and safety-nets, what would compel a son to return to his father. The answer is very little. Because the individual has a diminished impact on the consequences of their decisions, they are able to eek out an existence through government redistribution. The purpose of such redistribution came about as people felt the government was the best place to turn to in order to support those that couldn’t support themselves through circumstances out of their control. However, as all government programs do, it evolved to help minimize the ill effects of poor decision making by people that the elite have deemed incapable of making wise decisions. So why would the son turn back to the father if the government is in his way.

The importance here is that turning back to the father is not about moving back in with your parents, but turning back to our Heavenly Father. The parable is then also flipped when it comes to the older sons response. In the bible, he is angry that the father has welcomed his brother back. First, the ring, the robe, the calf, and any future property bestowed on the younger son comes out of the older sons inheritance. He has been a good son following all of the rules. He is angry at his father’s decision to welcome his son back as he doesn’t see the equity in it. The older son does not go to the banquet, and his response to his father’s request for him to come is left to the reader to conclude. This parable is about relationship with our Father. He values relationship by offering forgiveness, and he demonstrates that he prizes relationship over works.

In the entitlement era, you could look at the taxpayer as the older son. The taxpayer does not get to have the Father relationship issue dealt with in that instead of the Father giving away his inheritance to the younger son, it is Rome coming in and taking it from both the Father and the older son to give it to all wayward sons. The matter is no longer about the older son choosing relationship with the Father because what the father would do is removed from the equation.

We know that Christ would have us act out of compassion. There is no doubt of that. But that compassion was never to come out of coercion through taxation and redistribution. If God simply wanted all the poor to be provided for, he would do it himself. Instead, in this fallen world, he is looking for people to choose on their own to provide for their fellow man as an act of love. And for those that are destitute, he wants them to maintain their faith in God as the provider. Tell me how there is room in this equation for a Christ loving people to use the power of the government to act where God himself does not.

Pit Bull Mauls Jogger in Chicago

2012-01-03T13:49:00.000-06:00

My worst nightmare was realized this last week by a jogger who was mauled while jogging lakeside in Chicago. A 62 year old man was viciously attacked by a pair of pit bulls that "treated the man like a steak". Police ended up fatally shooting one of the muscular beasts, to which an owner is unknown. Anyone that knows me knows that I like to run. They also know that I do not like dogs, especially when I'm running, and of all dogs, I like pit bulls the least. I know dog owners defend their precious pooches as having the same rights as I do, but the last I checked, God made me and not dogs in his likeness, and he gave man, not man and dog dominion over the animals. Translated, that means I have more of a right to jog than a dog owner has to let their 'well-trained" dogs off of their leashes. I also question anyone that finds beauty in animals that are bred for their bite efficiency. One bad moment for a dog like this means the end of a person's life as they know it. Anyway, I'm just rambling because I get so worked up about these stories. Maybe I should stop the daily news feed for pit bull attacks.

Obama’s All In with Socialism Speech

2011-12-07T13:31:00.001-06:00

President Obama attempted to channel yet another President in a speech yesterday in Osowatomie, Kansas, this time choosing the rough rider Teddy Roosevelt. Unfortunately for Obama, our economy is what is being given a rough ride. Teddy gave the speech 101 years ago to lay out his progressive agenda. Obama decided to also make the first transparent move of his administration and broadcast to everyone that he too is a progressive. There were some 14 references to the word “fair” during his speech, which only matches the number of times the word was used during a 1917 Lenin stump speech. The word “fair” is to me the scariest word that can be used in reference to the government and society. Fair means that there must be some judgment in some circumstance as to what is fair. When used in conjunction with society, the determination of fair is left to the government, which can operate either benignly or malignantly. As more power is ceded to the federal government, the more malicious it tends to operate. Let’s face it, we are a fallen world. When we centralize power, we allow more and more of our lives to be dictated by a fallen people. This is why our nation’s greatness has been eroding in direct correlation to the size of our government. I don’t want to make this all spiritual, but people are going to turn to a central power one way or another. In the absence of a central government, it is more likely to be God. When the government grows, it is less likely to be God. Again, we see a direct correlation in the erosion of faith to the increase in the size of our government.

Back to “fair”, since that is the driving force in Obama’s message and governance. I ask you this, where does “fair share” come into play in a free society? Fair requires two things, a judgment on what is fair, and the enforcement of that judgment. For example, suppose we look at a football game as we would a free market. The game has rules regulating the play, just as there are regulations that dictate business. People have different views about the value of many of the rules, but one thing is consistent, the rules only get numerous. In football, the rules are applicable to both teams, however, they are subjectively applied, providing for varying results. It may be fair or not fair, but this isn’t even the kind of fair Obama is talking about. What Obama is talking about is fairness in outcome. This means that regardless of the rules, effort, or results of either team, a referee will determine whether or not the outcome is fair. This referee may choose to distribute points from one team to another. Suppose both teams have an equal record, but maybe on team had more penalties, perhaps some points would be taken from the less penalized team and given to the other. Even better, suppose the team with the smaller score has a worse record. The referee may feel that because their overall records are so disproportionate, that a large number of points would be taken from the better team and given to the worse team, resulting in the worse team achieving a victory. You see, for fairness to be enforced, one party in the equation must be penalized. Such a system would make watching football less desirable if the outcome was not left to the skill and abilities of the teams playing, and was instead decided by a single bureaucrat.

In the free market, it works the same way. If I go into work with the understanding that my individual effort has a direct impact on my financial outcome, I am more likely to apply more individual effort. However, if I show up to work and the formula that is applied is that the more effort I apply, the more likely the additional benefit of my additional effort will be applied to those that applied less effort, the less likely I am going to apply additional effort. In fact, the more likely I am going to simply want to receive the benefit of other people’s efforts. The more likely one person is going to reduce effort and hope to receive the benefit of other’s efforts, the more likely there will be a disproportionate number of beneficiaries to contributors. Does this sound familiar. This is the system we have been going down for decades now. Instead of calling it a benefit, it is called an entitlement. How is this fair? The truth is that in Obama’s world, some people should be treated more fairly than others. Going back to our football analogy, all people willing to participate within the free market system will benefit from the success of others. A bad football team playing a good football team receives the benefit of added ticket sales from people wanting to see the better team or better television revenue for people wanting to watch it on TV. Let’s leave fair with the kids and grow up Mr. President.

The Freedom to Celebrate Christmas

2011-12-02T11:26:00.000-06:00

It is that time of year where I examine the celebration of Christmas with my understanding of biblical principles. Some may feel it is hummbugness, but I assure you it is not. It is simply a reflection of my own journey with Christ and is not meant to be a judgment on those that disagree. So, with that disclaimer out of the way, here is what I am currently pondering. Every year, for the 30 or so days leading up to Christmas, there is story after story about how this city won’t allow a Christmas tree, or how this school won’t allow Santa to come, or this thing or that. Even before I was a believer, it got me all in a tizzy because it was an attack on the traditions I held sacred. In my secularness, I protested freedom to practice my religion. How can a state tell me no Santa or no Christmas tree. The answer to that question is easy. You cannot point to 95% of the Chistmas traditions as having any biblical basis. I’m not saying people can’t derive meaning from something, but there is nothing describing Santa or a Christmas tree. If the governor of Rhode Island wants to call a Christmas tree a holiday tree, he is welcome to it. He didn’t actually change or affect anything that had to do with my faith, which when I didn’t have real faith, greatly brought me down.

As my journey in my faith has brought me to a place where fewer and fewer traditions, such as Santa and trees, dominates my celebration of the birth of Christ, I have felt more and more liberation in reflecting on this day in which God became flesh and prophecies began to be fulfilled. The liberation is that nothing anyone can do externally can impact my own relationship with God and the celebration of Christ. If I see a story about a tree, I laugh a giddy laugh as I realize the liberation my faith has brought me. It’s kind of like when Jesus said let the dead bury their own. In this circumstance, it is letting the ‘dead’ celebrate their own. In the spirit of the Lord, there is Freedom. This Christmas, I’m celebrating Freedom.

Despicable Me Movie Review

2011-11-29T09:32:00.000-06:00

What rhymes with Despicable Me? Answer, Despicable Movie. Our family was high off the fun of Megamind, a movie we all enjoyed and have enjoyed many times since our first viewing. Even the youngest of our kids were quoting lines. We were hoping to repeat this fun with a movie that had a similar premise, Despicable Me. The movie is about a person who was destined to be a villain because of the negative influence of his mother and his odd appearance, think of Igor. Since he is a villain, he wants to be the best villain of all, competing against other villains that must go to the bank of evil to get loans to fund their evil projects. Unfortunately, in this movie, everyone is a villain. There are no decent people at all, that is until Gru, the main character, adopts three girls so that he can use them to infiltrate another villains layer so that he can steal something. There's no surprise here as he starts to actually care for the kids. The climax comes as he must choose between his villainous plans and attending the girls recital. When he makes the wrong choice, he must then fight the other villain to save his girls. The conclusion is that he wins and he keeps the girls. Aside from the predictability of the plot, other things that worked poorly were the voice acting, steve carrell did horrible, the humor, since there was no real humor, the writers tried using the word "poop" to create laughter, but failed, and the general dialogue was boring. Perhaps if the bar hadn't been raised so high by Megamind, I might have found the movie somewhat slightly entertaining. My kids did enjoy the movie, and I suppose they are the real audience, but with Megamind, the whole family enjoys viewing it together. I doubt we will do that with this movie. Oh yeah, the minions in this movie were lame. No matter how hard they tried, it was lame.

Megamind Movie Review

2011-11-23T07:30:00.000-06:00

I’m not one to look for spiritual equivocation in movies, but I couldn’t help it when it came to Megamind. The premise of Megamind is what would happen if a somebody with superpowers would land in a bad environment as opposed to a good one. Megamind escapes his planet before its destruction, but so does metroman. They are both traveling to earth. Metroman lands in a mansion while Megamind lands in a prison for the criminally gifted. Because of their environment, Megamind becomes a criminal and Metroman becomes superhero. Megamind felt he was living out his destiny and thought if he was destined to be bad, he would be the baddest there is. Megamind’s world is thrown upside, however, when one of his plans to destroy Metroman succeeds. Without his nemesis around, Megamind feels empty and depressed. He no longer feels fulfillment in his evil pursuits. Inspired by the reporter that he has captured time and again, he decides to create a superhero to fill that void. He injects Metroman’s super powers into a bumbling TV cameraman and sets about training this person to become a new hero, Titan, so that Megamind can once again find purpose. While Megamind is training Titan, he is simultaneously falling in love with the reporter. Because Megamind is using a disguise, she has no idea she is falling for Megamind. Megamind begins to question his evil existence, going so far as telling Minion, his minion, that he doesn’t want to be evil anymore. Meanwhile, Megamind’s attempt to create a hero backfires in that Titan doesn’t want to use his powers for good, but rather for selfish pursuits. Essentially, Megamind has created a super villain. Megamind is now faced with a choice. He can reject the belief that he is destined to be evil and instead make the willful heart choice to be good. Megamind makes the good choice and defeats Titan.

Where I find the parallels in Christ is that this movie is all about heart choices, heart choices for good and evil. What made any of the characters good or evil was not their deeds, but from what within their heart motivated them to do them. Metroman chose to use his powers to be selfless while Titan chose to use those same powers for bad. The only variable between the two of them was their heart. Megamind showed that there is no such thing as being destined to be good or evil, that it is a choice. He also showed that you can overcome your circumstance and still make the right choice.

Christ is about choice. Christ is not looking for works, he is looking for choice. It doesn’t matter how you were raised, in a mansion or a prison. It doesn’t matter what you have done, been a super villain terrorizing metro city your whole life. It doesn’t matter what words of destiny have been spoken over your life. You can choose with your heart.

Also, the movie is pretty entertaining. My wife really likes it.

Bring Back the Middle Class of Education: Hypocrisy of the Occupiers

2011-11-21T11:31:00.000-06:00

I was inspired by a friend’s blog in which he had a chart that showed that the US has the highest number of top universities in the world. Yet despite the number of top universities, the US lags far behind the other nations on the chart when it comes to test scores. The point of this post is not to discuss the lack of real education provided at these schools, but to talk about the hypocrisy of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) crowd.

You see, the OWS crowd identifies themselves as part of the 99% of the have-nots, compared to the 1% haves. Most of these OWS people are college students or college graduates. Only around 25% of Americans have a college degree. That means the vast majority of people in the US have no college degree. That puts the degreed people in an elite class. That means 25% possess 100% of the valid education in America. Shouldn’t there be educational redistribution. This isn’t such a crazy idea. In the world I work in, you either have a degree and are worthwhile or you have no degree and are not worth anything. A college degree is something you either have or don’t have, and we are told from birth that you are nothing unless you have a degree. There is no educational middle class. But how can there be one you ask? The truth is, there used to be one.

You see, for generations, trade schools, apprenticeships, certifications, and 2 year degrees had value. While the real value still exists, the perceived value does not. If I become an electrician, I’m viewed by the 25% as some greasy fingered dullard. Why is what the 25% think important. The 25% control the educational system, the legal system, the political system, and the media. They do not control business. Haven’t you ever wondered why the institutions that the 25% control seem so anti-business. It is because business is the opportunity where the 75% can find success. They don’t want the 75% to have success, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so.

What the OWS movement is essentially about is redistributing opportunity to be successful from 100% of people to the 25% they are a part of. What we need to do is to re-establish the value of the educational middle-class. Support vocations and trades. Push back against the OWS.

Captain America Movie Review

2011-11-21T08:00:00.000-06:00

I don't normally watch action movies, but I made an exception so that I could screen the movie before my daughter viewed for a birthday party. Captain America did not upset my normalcy. The flick started out well enough. It didn't move at too fast a pace. They took their time in developing an introducing protagonist and antagonist. You had a general feeling for who they are and what motivates them. Unfortunately, once Captain America started doing Captain America things, the movie moved at such a fast and jerky pace that you had no real sense of what the goal was and why each mission might be important. Instead, a whole bunch of new characters are introduced, of which they were all very inconspicuously diverse (I don't know if the comics were that way, but sometimes you sacrifice a sense of realism for diversity and it doesn't pay off), You could tell they were all supposed to be cool or comical, but just as in the Clash of the Titans remake, you really could care less about any of them and their contribution to the story, which became non-existent. There are fights and chases, and a climax that could best be described as weak and meaningless. Also, if you are looking for any patriotism here, don't look for it. America only references the place he is born. There is no real nationalism in this movie.

The Futility of Shoe Laces

2011-11-18T09:20:00.000-06:00

There are few activities that mark the emergence for a child from preschool into grade school like learning how to tie your shoes. It means that you have acquired the complex dexterity and ability to remember instructions needed to achieve a task that will allow you to independently put on your shoes. Velcro has stifled the need to learn this skill by putting of for many years. Why should a child have to learn this skill when they have already achieved this independence since they are were 2. Because I hate tying my shoes only to have them come undone, and because I have many small children that all wear velcro shoes that don't need to be retied, I have thought through the futility of laces.
Has technology not come far enough in shoe and velcro design that we all can't wear velcro shoes? I believe laces have hung on so long because adults don't want to be associated with the velcro of their youth. It is like saying to a kid, not only can they not have a drink or drive a car or vote, they also can't tie their own shoes. I advocate for a lace free movement when it comes to athletic shoes. Many dress shoes have already turned into fancy slippers. Athletic shoes need to be more secure than a slipper, but surely a velcro strap can accomplish this task. Let's send the shoelace companies to the same pages in history as milk men, buggy whip manufacturers, and ice plants.

Return of Zulubuff

2011-11-17T11:39:00.000-06:00

I have been on a vacation for the last 5 weeks following the birth of my 7th child, Jack. I decided to take a break from blogging as well, but now with less than a year left until the next election, I am back and ready to go. As a recap of the last 5 weeks, my wife and I had our 7th child. I stayed home and helped around the house and spent extended time with the kids. We didn't do anything like a trip, just living day to day with one another. There were highs and lows. I am now back at work and miss my family time, but also glad to be back working at my career.

Out on Sabatical until 11/17/2011

2011-11-03T10:46:00.001-05:00

Unknown Movie Review

2011-10-12T09:23:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I’m a sucker for a movie set in Germany in which German is spoken, so I enjoyed Unknown for that reason. I also enjoy Liam Neeson in pretty much anything. Unknown is a mystery movie with hints of wanting to be an action movie. Finding out what is Unknown at the end of the movie is not so difficult as you feel like you have seen this movie before (any of the bourne movies), but it is told in a compelling enough way that you are still drawn in and entertained. There are the clichéd scenes where the villain gives a full reveal to the main character rather than just killing him, as well as the most ridiculous car chase scenes. I hate car chase scenes. There is nothing more predictable in a movie when you have a car chase scene in the middle of the movie. You know the conclusion before it begins. I guess a couple of exceptions would be those interestingly enough done by Christopher Nolan in Inception and Batman Dark Knight. Anyway, Unknown is a movie starring Liam Neeson who suffers a head injury shortly after arriving in Germany with his wife for a Bio Chemistry summit. After 4 days in a coma, Neeson awakes in a German hospital. He has lost some of his memory, but knows his name, why he is in Germany and that he loves his wife. But where is his wife. Neeson leaves the hospital despite the doctors warning to return to the hotel he and his wife were to stay in. He has no identification, so he has a hard time getting in. Once he shows the hotel security his wife, they escort him over to her, but to his surprise, she doesn’t know who he is. The remainder of the film is Neeson’s struggle to regain his memory. As it unfolds, it is clear that things aren’t as simple as that. Ultimately, upon gaining his memory, he is given a choice to remain who he was, or seek redemption through who he has become.

Contrasting the Failure of Bush and Obama: Right or Left?

2011-10-11T14:29:00.000-05:00

I often summarize the Bush Presidency as an utter failure. I blame George Bush for an even bigger failure, the current Obama administration. When you compare George Bush and Barrack Obama, your gut reaction is to compare the policies of the right with those of the left. You might also conclude that you can’t win either way. I do agree that you cannot win with either Bush or Obama. You will also not win in the 2012 election either re-electing Obama, or electing a Bushalike, Mitt Romney. So where do you go if neither the right nor left seem to work. The answer is the right. If you merely follow the popular media, you would think that George Bush and Karl Rove are a couple of right wing purists. This is done very intentionally. The reality is that there is more in common between George Bush and Obama than a true right wing politician. While the scope of failure for Bush is not as large as Obama’s, they type of failure is very similar. What did George Bush do right that is from the right. He cut taxes, including capital gains taxes. But he couldn’t go all right. He had to go a little left even in this. He added refundable tax credits for those that don’t pay taxes. For the average person, that means he did more redistribution. He passed the Medicare prescription plan, which was the biggest increase in entitlements since the great society. He increased the power of the department of education. He increase deficit spending and he signed the first bailout. Nothing much from the right in anything that Bush did really. Now comes Obama. He holds steady on Bush’s war plans and actually opens up another front. He passes bigger bailouts and bigger entitlements and more and more unlegislated policies and mandates. You can summarize Obama’s presidency as Supersize Bush. Obama blames Bush for everything, and he might be right in that Obama is just following through with more gusto on the Bush plan.

But let’s be honest, Bush’s failure is not a failure of the right because little if anything at all was legislated that is a true right wing initiative. If you can describe Obama’s policy as an adverb of Bush’s, and Obama is the most left wing President in history, then Bush is just a more moderate flavor of Obama and not a flavor of the right wing at all. The greatest victory that can be scored from the Obama Presidency is that we will be able to directly point to the failure of left wing policy. In this coming election, we need to look for the candidate with the most right wing fruit in their life, not the most right wing lip service. Who has lived fiscally conservative and respected life and liberty, not who speaks about it, but passes government healthcare in their state, or offers special breaks to people that break the law. All I am saying is give liberty a chance.

If we had a real conservative candidate, they would call for cutting entitlements, not sustaining them or limiting their growth. If we had a real conservative, they would be for reforming the entire tax code, not using the tax code to pick winners and losers. If we had a real conservative, they wouldn’t be talking about different things the department of education or energy or commerce could do, they would be talking about what benefits would be gained by doing without those departments. If we had a real conservative, they would never entertain the idea of using federal spending as a means of fixing a social ill. If we had a real conservative with a real conservative congress, I think it would be a while before we saw leftists again.

Netflix Abandons Qwikster Plan

2011-10-10T09:41:00.000-05:00

In my effort to update this blog with all of the biggest Netflix news, I'm happy to announce that Netflix has come to their senses and abandoned plans of splitting the physical dvd and streaming business into two separate website. Yes, they have learned that their business is built solely around people's ability to use a computer, navigate the internet, and order movies, and because of this, their customer base is capable of going to a single website to process both shipped dvds and streaming movies. I want to tip my hat to Netflix for finally coming to terms with what makes them profitable.

Occupy Wall Street: A Protest in Ignorance.

2011-10-10T09:22:00.003-05:00

The success of failure of the Occupy Wall Street movement hinges on the ignorance of those watching the over the top coverage of these limited protests. It is billed as our version of the Arab spring that ushered in a new set of radicals to replace old despots across the middle east. The problem with this comparison is that the radical is already in power. The protestors are a façade. It would be like Quadafi funding his own revolution against him if we are to believe their authenticity. The truth is that these “protestors” are being organized and funded by leftist organizations, such as the Billionaire funded moveon.org. In the same breath that these people speak out against capitalism as the reason for the world’s ills, they take in sustenance provided for them from a billionaire’s pocket book. I would feel like such a lemming. A true point of irony I find is that so many of these people are supposed to be college educated intellectuals, you know, the people that go to school so they will know how to run your life. All I have to do is listen to a single interview from one of these protestors and I can figure out why our education system is broken.

Another aspect of difference between these protestors and the arab spring radicals is that there is no way they would support the removal of Obama from office. Think about it, a “grassroots” protest against the system, but the current leader of the system is exempt from their criticism. I have never ever heard of such a thing. If this were real, it wouldn’t matter who was in office. These “discontents” would speak out against the President of any party. And as a sure sign of the alignment between Obama and the occupiers is that he has stated that they are just good intentioned folks with legit anxieties about our financial institutions. Contrast this with his views on the tea partiers. Tea party folk are mostly employed middle class people that are tired of being squeezed by taxes, squeezed by growing deficits, and squeezed by increasing regulation. They are people that are just trying to live the American dream without the government getting in the way. Obama and his administration view these folks as domestic terrorists and racists. The occupiers close down bridges, threaten to hack wall street, and get arrested for other unrest. Their numbers are in the mere hundreds at locations outside of Wall Street. The Tea party have rallies in the thousands with no unrest. The occupiers call out a “jew” conspiracy of bankers. Andrew Breitbart has offered a reward of 100k dollars to anyone providing evidence of racism at the Obamacare Pelosi walk, a reward that has gone uncollected.

You must suspend all sense of rationality to believe in the authenticity of the occupy movement. Really, the only occupier movement we need to be concerned about is the one taking place in the White House.

Dune: Extended Edition Movie Review

2011-10-07T20:09:00.000-05:00

I've seen David Lynch's Dune many times. Twenty years ago, I remember seeing the super long extended version of Dune on the Sci-fi channel. I always wondered why the original release wasn't the longer version since it had more in it. Flash forward 20 years to this week, and I rented the extended version. It made me question where my head was when I was 15, because this extended version is horrible. Maybe I wasn't such a movie making critic and could look past the horrible editing and sound. David Lynch was very smart to have his name removed from the extended version. The only parts that play out with any degree of quality are the scenes untouched by Alan Smithee. And when I say untouched, I mean sound too. There is so much to be said for proper film making, from editing and sound to acting and score. As much as a fan of Dune as I am, I have to say in my more seasoned age, I hope to never see this version again. For those of you who don't know Dune, aside from a pile of sand, it is the greatest sci-fi novel ever written. It is the sci-fi equivalent to the Lord of the Rings. Dune tells the galactic story of politics and intrigue in a very distant future (approximately 20,000 years if you piece it together from the prequel novels). At the center of the story is young Paul Atreides, who could be a prescient super being created through 90 generations of breeding, who loses his father and fiefdom to his sworn enemies, the Harkonnens. He befriends the local inhabitants of the planet Arrakis, the fremen, and together, they work to defeat the Emperor of the known universe and place themselves and their desert planet as the center of the Universe. The fremen culture as created by Frank Herbert is one of the most interesting parts of the novels, which brings me back to the movie. The movie does a horrible part under developing these fierce warriors that take over all power. Dune is a great novel and its depth of character, description, and intrigue ruined me for most other novels. I give the book 12 thumbs up, and the original movie 2 thumbs up, and the extended version of the movie 12 thumbs down.

President Obama: The New Watchmen Vigilante

2011-10-03T14:04:00.000-05:00

No, this isn’t another George Lucas video game inspired by Star Wars. Unfortunately, this is about yet another power grab by the executive branch under the Obama administration. President Obama began, without legislative approval, to grant the executive additional powers through the open and sanctioned non enforcement of laws, such as the defense of marriage act and various immigration laws. He has gone against the precedent he railed about during his campaign, regarding congressional approval for military action when the country is not facing an imminent threat. Not to mention the overly aggressive use of the umbrella of congressional approval to use various regulatory agencies to circumvent congress in enacting tougher restrictions, as seen through the EPA. Those acts of extending power are scary enough, but now the President has taken it upon himself to become the judge, jury and executioner of an American Citizen. How did he do it.

You see, if you are going to do something bad and try to get by with it, you want people to get used to the idea first. I believe he took his inspiration from “the Watchmen” movie. In the Watchmen, you have a group of just regular folks that get sick of the crime, so they decide to take matters into their own hands, kind of like batman. Because they are targeting what society views as the slime of the earth, they are able to get by with their blatant disregard for due process. Instead of arresting people and offering lawyers, they can beat or even kill suspects. In the court of public opinion, they had it coming to them. The problem is that with this implied power, came abuse. It was an ends justifies the means method of justice whereas our country is based on a means justifies the ends standard of law. As you saw in the Watchmen, the Comedian took full advantage of his implied mandate. If it meant innocent people were harmed, who cared. He delivered results. The people became angry and the watchmen were eventually outlawed, but only after almost 60 years of being above the law.

So now Obama, sitting in the White House after having just screened this movie, thought he could do the same and hopefully sway an election. He dawns his costume alter-ego, the agitator, and got down to work. Who could he kill first with his new power, just to see if the people would flinch. Then it came to him, why not kill an well-known terrorist, that happens to be an American Citizen. Using the technology at his disposal, he launches a drone strike and kills the Citizen in Yemen. Everyone cheers. On the surface, it is just another victory for the President that got the number one enemy just months earlier.

My own knee jerk reaction was to be excited. If fighting the war on terror alone was the ends to justify all means, then I would say way to go Obama. But, ours is a country of liberty and freedom, from each other, and our government. Indeed, our governments true function is to secure those liberties. While we may want to conduct a war on terror, it cannot come at the cost of our liberties, such as intrusive airport screenings, or domestic surveillance.

Before I became too knee jerk in my reaction to criticize the President, I had to take a good amount of time and digest what just happened. I had to remove the individual holding the office and think about whether I would want anyone in that office to have such power. I set aside my disgust with the blatant hypocrisy demonstrated by Obama in his elimination of due process for a citizen while advocating for it for non-citizens and I came to my conclusion.

I believe that Obama’s decision to unilaterally kill a US citizen is gross abuse of power and must be stopped. Such an offense my even rise to a high crime and misdemeanor. Today, the target is a despicable terrorist linked to thousands of deaths, but who will be his ‘terrorist” be tomorrow. Early in his administration, he put out a memo that said returning vets are a great security to the US. If he killed one person without due process, why not kill more. As a citizen, we are innocent until proven guilty. We have a right to our day in court and to face our accuser. We have the right to legal counsel and we have the right against cruel and unusual punishment. What did this terrorist do. Did he physically, kill all of the people or did he incite people to do it. Really, he can only be said he was suspected of being a terrorist. Do you realize how grave of an act this is. One man, President Obama, has set aside our entire judicial system and the rights granted under the constitution to kill a person he felt was a threat. While I do not mourn the terrorist death, I do mourn the death blow to liberty that was delivered through this decision.

In the name of transparency, the Obama administration drafted a memo stating their legal justification for the strike. They consulted one another and drafted this memo, but the memo has been classified and will not be released. Think about that. Imagine you’re at your next tea party event and you get clipped by a drone. Your family asks on what authority was this done and all you get was a “that’s classified” response from the administration, and the sound of crickets from the media. Is this the path you want your country to go down for the death of one terrorist, we all now have targets on our back.

Watering Down 'Racism'

2011-09-30T09:51:00.000-05:00

First, let me establish that in this country, there still exist people of one race, gender or ethnicity that have feelings of fear or hostility toward people of another race, gender, or ethnicity. With that being said, I think that when people call other people racist, or declare a statement or position as racist, it does no service to the battle to fight racism. Over my entire life, I have heard that term coined so many times by those that financially benefit from stirring up racist sentiments, and more often than not, there is no validity to the statement. Racism, as stated previously, is not a disagreement in values or thought by one person of a certain race, gender, or ethnicity by another person of a different race, gender, or ethnicity. But that is how it is most often used. If one’s disagreement is motivated by the animosity against another’s race, gender or ethnicity, then you have some validity to the racist label. To be able to judge with all impartiality, you must either know the motives of the person accused of racism, or the act or word must be such that the racist element would be judged beyond reasonable doubt. Take our current President. Few are able to offer criticism of Obama without being called racist. Most recently, an individual put a sign in their front yard depicting Obama in a diaper saying, “Change me, I stink.” The cries of racism have been intense, but let’s look at this impartially. There is nothing in the statement itself that indicates racism. To make that statement racist, you would have to change it to say, “Change me, I stink and I’m black.” Now it is a statement beyond reasonable doubt of racism. Now let’s look at the picture. There is nothing stereotypical in the picture itself. You could substitute a leader of any other race and the message is the same. The only thing you are left with is intent. There is no known statement of racist intent relating to this sign. Unless we are willing to get into the business of thought police, we will never truly know the intent, nor should we judge the intent. The point of this exercise is that those that are crying foul about racism for something like this do a disservice to the fight against racism.

Imagine if we used the term “murder” the same way. Suppose every time there is a disagreement between people, one of them says they were murdered. Suppose these calls all go to the police and the police have to be dispatched to investigate whether there really was a murder. It would be really easy for the real murders to go unnoticed in this scenario. The reason why I use murder is because it is a very important charge that deserves our full attention. For us to use our resources wisely, we need to declare murder only when a murder has happened. We need to do the same thing with racism. Right now, the real racism is being lost in the noise.

The Dilema For Drug Companies: Big Pharmacutical Can't Win

2011-09-29T09:41:00.002-05:00

Drug companies have been the villain amongst the media, politicians, and the consumer for decades. They are even the villain for those whose lives depend on them. I have been blessed for most of my life in not having to take medication, aside from asthma inhalers, nor has my family been dependent on continued use of prescription medication. For those who have, and have possibly paid the very high and draining prices for prescription medication, there is really nothing past this sentence that will convince you that perhaps the drug companies are not all evil. Let me begin by saying that drug companies are for profit businesses. All of the greatest innovations and products, from healthcare to agriculture, from consumer products to travel, have come from the risk and investment of for profit companies. Prior to America, the ability for a for profit company to exist was very limited in that most commerce was tied in some way to the government. For all of man’s time on the earth, we have never seen the explosion of innovation as we have when we removed government from the equation and allowed individuals to take risks, be creative, make a lot of money, and fail. If the development of prescription medication were left to the benevolence of the federal government, we would not have the medications we have now. Let me explain why.

Developing a new drug is about as risky of an endeavor as an company can undertake. The end product alone, a pill or solution that is to be ingested by the body, is so full of risk to the company that the liability costs alone should make it prohibitive. Imagine having to design something that can be safely taken by more than 6 billion people, none of whom are made exactly alike. It would be like design a passenger seat in a car without knowing the exact dimension of the car’s body, but expecting it to fit all of the cars, and if it doesn’t, then the car owner can sue the seat maker. Let me make another car analogy. If a drug company were like a car company, they could make decent money by delivering the basics of the car, four wheels, seats, body, engine, steering wheel, transmission. Because these components are widely adopted, the cost involved in developing, testing, and manufacturing these components can be spread across the whole consumer market. But now suppose there is a need for .5 % of the driving community to need seat warmers. For automakers, that additional cost is added to the price of the cars that will have those seat warmers added. While it is a small component, the cost to develop, test, and manufacture those seat warmers is not .5% of the cost to do the other items.

Drug companies have it much worse than auto manufactures. The cost to create a drug that might be used by half of the world’s population, but still be compatible with all of it is going to be possibly less than the cost of a drug that will only be used by .5% of the population. So you can buy a bottle of 50 tylenol for 2 bucks, but the cost to purchase the life-saving drug for that rare form of cancer is going to be exponentially more expensive. And to make matters worse, there is a real expectation that these “rotten” companies should be spending all of their time and money on discovering new drugs for things that will only ever be used by a limited number of consumers. So, let’s look at the no-win scenarios they face for pricing their products

1. The drug company spreads the cost of that new drug across all of its products, making the ones used by most people more expensive. This means that standard drugs might be priced out of the range of more and more consumers.

2. The drug company only applies the cost of the new drug development to the new drug itself. This means that those that might need the new drug can’t afford it, but the other drugs are not affected.

3. The drug company stops developing new drugs.

Which of these options do you want. We already know that governments didn’t do this work and if they did, they obviously wouldn’t invest in new drugs because of the start up cost and risk. Maybe we should look at how our government drives the high cost of these drugs first.

The Debt Movie Review

2011-09-28T08:00:00.001-05:00

This is one of the few reviews I will do of a movie that is in current release. The movie is about 3 Mossad agents in 1966 trying to track down the fictional equivalent of Dr. Mengle. Overall, I think the movie tried doing a little too much. There was a love triangle between the two male agents and one female agent. It is as if highly trained professionals just couldn’t keep their hands off of each other. Many movies interject a love element that only detracts from the movie. I realize that the outcome of the love triangle is important for other elements of the film, but it could have been more easily written out. Just as a side note, I think of the big WW2 pics about a decade or more ago, Saving Private Ryan and Pearl Harbor. I was so thankful they stuck to the brotherly love of combat in saving private ryan over skirt chasing pilots in pearl harbor. Anyway, another element they introduced was the devious villain, the nazi doctor that was their objective. He was creepy and you hoped he would get was coming to him. The story switched from 1997 with the adult agents dealing with some sort of tortured element from their successful mission, especially the female agent, who now has a daughter that has written a book about her mother and father’s daring mission. The mother, played by Helen Mirren is so reluctant to be a part of the book, you know something isn’t true. The movie then flashes back to the mission as it plays out. This was the best part of the movie and could have been the entire movie to better effect. Spoiler Alert: As you guessed it, the mission doesn’t go according to plan and the doctor gets away, which means that you now know that these agents have been living a lie, and you know why one of the agents killed themselves in the opening 5 minutes. One element that played out very well was making the doctor, who is now practicing in East Germany, an obgyn. The Jewish female agent must go and see this doctor claiming fertility problems to confirm his identity. She must put herself in the absolutely most vulnerable position for the sake of the mission. This was well done and you as an audience member also felt the discomfort. Overall, I give this movie two thumbs up for entertainment purposes, not for acting or academy awards reasons. For a really good Mossad movie, I suggest Munich.

The Legal Fringe:MO to Ban Facebook Contact between Teachers and Students

2011-09-26T10:36:00.000-05:00

I often depart from traditional conservatism in my deep belief in the limitation of government and personal accountability. Recently, Missouri has been in the spot light for the bill it passed and is now working to revise to limit the possibility of a student child relationship through social media. Basically, it makes it illegal for a teach to have individual contract with a child through social media, such as facebook. Posting on the wall would be okay, but doing chat or private message would be illegal. The purpose here is to keep teachers or students from initiating more intimate contact. Sounds fair enough and as a good conservative, you should want to keep the teachers in line and children safe.

But to quote Vito Corleone, I'm a reasonable man. There is already a law that makes a relationship between a student and teacher illegal, do we need more. Is this really a deterrent. I mean, if two individuals are already interested in going down this path, I don’t think a law limiting their contact will do anything to prevent it from happening. It doesn’t physically prevent them from communicating this way, just punishes the teacher for doing so, which should really only be an issue if the relationship was inappropriate, which is covered under the law already. To me, it seems like the push for gun control. The only people that are affected by gun control are those that would purchase and own a gun legally anyway. The criminals are going to get their weapon one way or another, so why make everyone else defenseless. I know e-mail and facebook isn’t up to that level, but isn’t it about attacking a constitutional right to speech in the name of protecting us. Again, the relationship is already illegal outside of this new law. Why allow such a fringe law that only desensitizes us to other infringements on our speech. I say no.
And as a side point, there is a lot of news now about some teacher that called a tea party member a nazi. While I may not agree, the teacher was not at an official school function, and while there were students there, it wasn’t a mandated class. If a person becomes a teacher, does that mean they cannot have independent thought. We have a real problem with this stuff going on in the classroom before captive audiences. Let’s not water it down by punishing people for what is said outside of the classroom. One of my most respected teachers in highschool was as liberal as they get, but he never brought it into the classroom, and he never punished me for my beliefs.

Long Distance Warrior: Overcoming Government Monopolies

2011-09-22T13:43:00.000-05:00

I watched an interesting documentary last night on William McGowan, the leader of MCI, formerly Microwave Communications Incorporated. In a nutshell, prior to McGowan and MCI, AT&T had a monopoly on all phone service. Sure that is hard to believe now with so many carriers, but that is how it was before the 70’s. William McGowan did a little research and found out that AT&T did not have a government sanctioned monopoly, which meant they could encounter competition. From his point of view, since they had 100% of market share, they could only go down and the competition he was offering would go up. Through force of will and much litigation, MCI broke the AT&T monopoly and now we have the information age we have. The key in his thinking was, just because AT&T has the monopoly, doesn’t mean they should have it.

As I like to do, I would like to transfer this thinking to our federal government. Obviously, the government we have now is not the government we had 100 years ago. There was no social security or medicare 100 years ago, yet we still had elderly and poor. You see, once the government gets involved in something, they become the monopoly in that thing, such as senior retirement and healthcare. We can see how the introduction of Obamacare with the promise that nothing will change for those that don’t want it to, will effectively end privately funded healthcare. This isn’t meant to be a discussion of the merits, or lack thereof, of this project, but merely to show the progression of the government monopoly. Or look at the student loan program as another recent example.

The problem with a government monopoly compared to a private monopoly is that a government monopoly carries the full force of law. If AT&T wanted to collect past payments, they have to go through the court system. If the government wants to collect, they directly garnish your wages. So, when we debate the size and scale of government, most people believe it is too large, but they make the suckers choice and say it is too late to change. Why can’t we act like McGowan and question all of these government programs and say, why should the government be the ones in charge of senior care, or poverty, or you name it. I’ll guarantee we will do it better.

Netflix Letter to Customers from Reed Hastings: Qwikster Launches

2011-09-19T11:20:00.000-05:00

Just when I thought Netflix couldn't make anymore mistakes to try and destroy their business comes the letter from Netflix co-founder, Reed Hastings. The letter begins by expressing his sorrow for the changes they have made and the impact it has had on their customers, though nothing will change. He explains the need to focus on streaming in order to maintain relevance, and not become another AOL or Borders. The dagger point to their business comes later in the letter when he announces the official splitting of the DVD and streaming business. All of the physical media transactions will take place on their new website, Qwikster, while the streaming service will continue through the Netflix website. For most successful businesses, like Wal-Mart, the goal is to have a one-stop shop. I felt I was able to keep my business with Netflix because I could manage both my physical DVD's as well as my streaming content on one website. You see, webpages have something called tabs and links that allow you to do multiple things on a single site. They've been around for years. Netflix, however, feels that their consumers are incapable of navigating multiple tabs within a single page to manager multiple services. So their solution is to send you to another "store". When you separate these two services in such a dramatic way, the consumer will then shop around for each service individually, and the value add of doing both services on one site is lost. If I go to Wal-Mart for years to get my groceries and shampoo, and they suddenly don't sell shampoo and their main store, but instead tell me to go to another store, chances are good that #1, I'll be mad. #2, while I'm mad at having to go somewhere else, I will be less inclined to go to the other store they own. #3. I might find that going to another store, I like their services better and maybe stop going to both stores all together. In summary, Netflix's effort to control the streaming business has caused its consumer base to look for the off ramps and maybe try another stream. They did lose 600,000 customers over the last couple of months.

Limitless Movie Review

2011-09-19T08:38:00.000-05:00

Limitless was an interesting movie. I found the concept intriguing enough to keep my attention through the end of the movie. The story follows that an inspired writer with little to no motivation in life bumps into his ex-wife's brother, who slips him an experimental drug. Through the main characters narration, he finds himself taking a drug that a relative stranger gave him that is experimental. The drug is designed to allow the user to use more than the normal 20% of his brain. Upon first use, the main character was able to recall small details of information he had experienced during his life, he was also able to write 90 pages of his stalled novel. Since the drug only lasts a day, he then hunts down his brother in law to get more. Unfortunately, his brother-in-law is dead, but that allows him to steal the large supply of this new drug as well as some starter cash for his new brain. He starts of small, doing things like finishing his book, learning the piano, learning new languages, getting back with his freshly ex-girlfriend. He then decides to make some money. To do so, he needs some cash and decides to get a loan from the russian mafia. He's not worried because he knows he will be able to earn the money back playing the stock market. Sure enough, he makes a couple of million dollars in no time, catching the attention of some large investors. He forgot to pay back the mafia who come collecting the cash, which is not a problem. The problem is that the mafia figure takes one of the drugs off of the main character and becomes addicted. This is the first issue he now must face. The other one is that his accelerated use of the drug has made him miss massive periods of time during the day. He does things that he doesn't remember. He also finds out that the drug is killing people. The story arc goes, loser does loser things, then he finds a drug, and he becomes super smart. He does all the things you think you would do if you had the brain capacity to do it, or the time as in ground hog day. Learning isn't enough, so he wants power and money, now we get into a cascade of bad issues, with drug addiction, mafia, and intrigue. In the end, he levels out and overcomes his obstacles. From an entertainment perspective, I give this movie two thumbs up.

Evangelicals Left Off National Cathedral 9/11 Program: Don't Worry

2011-09-07T17:16:00.000-05:00

The knee jerk reaction is to get appalled at the exclusion of the nations largest faith groups, southern baptists and evangelicals. That was my initial reaction. Maybe I have grown numb by the continuous onslaught of America by this most un-American President, as well as his apparent distaste for Christians. After deep contemplation, I simply told myself that God could likely care less whether or not an evangelical is at such a secular event. And what would an evangelical offer. How would his attendance further God's kingdom. Where 2 or 3 are gathered in His name, there He is also. If remembering the fallen of 9/11 is an important exercise of your faith, simply follow the word. Gather in your homes or small groups. God can hear your prayers from anywhere. Do not get caught up in the trappings of making your faith overly political by wanting it to be part of secular rememberances. Jesus, in speaking to his early disciples said, let the dead bury their own. Perhaps the message we can take away from that is that we are to concern ourselves with loving one another and spreading God's word more than getting involved in Obama's divisiveness.

The Madness of King Obama: Stimulus Redux

2011-09-07T09:19:00.000-05:00

This morning I watched as the details of Obama’s big jobs program have come out. He is going to propose 300 billion in STIMULUS spending, but won’t call it stimulus of course. It will contain a 1 year extension of unemployment, because nothing stimulates more than joblessness. It will contain money for public workers laid off due to state budget cuts, you have to reward your base. And you must also include more “shovel ready” jobs through public works projects. Oh, and just so you can include tax cuts in the same sentence as big government spending, he will propose a 1 year extension of the payroll tax cut. One trillion dollars of this stuff didn’t do anything but make things worse, so why not add another 300 billion. I know I was expecting this, but the audacity of proposing such a thing is madness.

The idea of using such reckless methods to cure the economy made me think about the movie, The Madness of King George. In the movie, the poor king suffered from porpheria, which, when it was in effect, would cause the ‘madness’. The funny thing about the movie was watching a trio of doctors attempt to use the treatments of the day to cure him, treatments that we as the viewer know are totally ineffective and actually harmful. One doctor obsessed about the king’s stool samples. Another would do torturous physical things to burn or leach the illness out of the King. So, running on the treadmill, I see this news break, and I thought of Obama and his team as a bunch of crazy doctors trying out their medieval cures for the economy. We as the country must endure the punishment even though it is actually making us worse, yet the doctors don’t care.

Netflix and STARZ End Contract in 2012

2011-09-02T15:11:00.000-05:00

In the spirit of Netflix's radio commercials where valid question receive irreverent answers, I would like to offer this question: What company has chosen to make its primary route of distribution a route where only 6% of their top 100 items are available, at the cost of upsetting the customer base for the other 94%. Additionally, that same company has its contract with its primary provider of the 6% end in less than a year. Answer, NETFLIX.
Netflix appears to be going down a strange path of self destruction. I've never seen a popular company make so many missteps and upset its customer base so much in so little time. In my previous blogs, I have mentioned that it is apparent that Netflix wants to go all in when it comes to being the primary provider of streaming content. Unfortunately, their drive has come at the cost of upsetting its base of customers that still use physical DVDs. I'm as in favor of streaming only as they get, but the vast majority of titles a person wants to see, especially new content, is simply not available online. As I said in my question, only 6 titles out of Netflix's top 100 viewed titles are available online. That tells me right away that most of what I want is not viewable via streaming. The primary provider of Netflix's content that is less than 4 years old is STARZ. You learn this quickly if you search for any decent instantview content, you will see it is through STARZ. IN fact, when I sorted the instantview option by rating, I couldn't see any 4 or higher star content that wasn't through STARZ. This is only important when you learn that STARZ and Netflix will be ending their relationship in 2012. If Netflix doesn't have other more significant deals with other studios for content, then the Netflix strategy is a bust. If I were a Netflix share holder, I would be more nervous than ever considering the reluctance of most studios to making their content available through streaming. Could we be seeing the end of Netflix in the wake of the end of blockbuster.

RACISM and money

2011-08-31T09:20:00.000-05:00

I have never found the logic in racism. Judging a person based on their mere appearance seems the most fruitless of methods of deciding a persons worth. When I read through my bible, I think of the sprawling city and cultural epicenter of Jerusalem. I imagine it being crowded with people from all over. That implies people of all different colors. What I never see in the bible is Jesus making an aside to speak to people based on their color. He doesn't tell us to think of people based on color or judge people based on color, or for any other reason for that matter.

Unfortunately, despite having overcome any legal means of discriminating against minorities in this country, people cannot let go of the divisiveness of color judgment. Right now, with our entire nation on the brink of economic collapse due to bloated deficit spending, some are finally asking for cuts in spending. For many dependent on the spending, it will be difficult to adjust, but for those in the position of power of allocating those funds, it will be an all out war. Recently, members of the congressional black caucus spoke at an event. The topic of the their speech involved attacking the “Tea Party”, who are the most vocal advocates for government spending. Their moderate comments in reference to the Tea Party included, “go to their homes and blow them up”, “They want to see you hanging from a tree”, “their actions are motivated out of racism”. These are beyond inflammatory and I should be offended. But I’m not offended at the direct attack at what I would like to see happen to our budget. I’m offended at the implied racism of these comments as well as the implicit racism in the policies of the left.

You see, I think it is racism to imply that minorities are more in NEED of federal spending that non-minorities. I think it is racism to imply that minorities are the only recipients of federal spending. If I were a minority, I would be offended that people that look like me must receive a government hand out to make it in the world. Let’s take their argument at face value, that government programs are designed specifically for minorities, isn’t that racism in and of itself, just racism against the majority. This has to be true for their argument to be valid. I think that tying minority success to government spending has done nothing more that inhibit progress for the minority community over the last 50 years. In fact the income gap between blacks and whites has actually increased under our first black president. Not because he is black, but because he has pushed through the most amount of government spending. If we want to end racism, let’s end all federal discretionary spending.

The Next Three Days Movie Review

2011-08-29T11:41:00.001-05:00

If I had to use one word to describe the movie “The Next Three Days” it would be ‘uncomfortable’. This can be either good or bad. In the case of this movie, I would have to say good. It isn’t that I liked feeling uncomfortable, but it showed that the director took a novel approach to a jail break movie. In fact, the movie made me feel uncomfortable in a way I hadn’t felt since seeing the movie Crash. I wondered if there were a connection between the two movies, and they just so happen to be written and directed by the same person, Paul Haggis. The only other movie I watched recently that made me feel uncomfortable was “The Road”, but the difference between those two movies is that I didn’t want to finish The Road, but couldn’t stop watching The Next Three Days. I actually finished it at 1 AM. So here is what the movie is about, a cute couple, Russel Crowe and Elizabeth Banks, with a 3 year old boy have a dinner out and then come home and it is obvious they are in love. The next morning, as they are happily preparing for the day, the police barge in to arrest….the beautiful young blonde wife. There is your first curveball. You then realize that whatever happened to her, she has been away from home for 3 years. Yup, she is in prison having been convicted of the murder of her boss. Her husband is the only one that believes her innocence. They have exhausted their last appeal and she tries to kill herself, unsuccessfully. Crowe then becomes desperate himself as he realizes that his wife really won’t ever be released. There are references to Don Quixote bending of reality to meet his own needs, making the viewer believe Crowe is doing the same thing about his wife innocence. Crowe then interviews a person that escaped from prison 7 times under the guise of writing a book. The escapee, Liam Neeson, quickly realizes that the interview is not for a book, but for personal reasons, so he gives him all the how-tos of escaping. Based on this interview, Crowe begins to work on his plan. Here is the first level of discomfort because your realize that this father is risking his relationship with his son to free his wife. As a viewer, you don’t want him to take such a risk, especially when you don’t know whether the wife really did do it or not. A formula Hollywood movie would then progress from this point with the husband putting together some sort of precise and outlandish escape. Since this doesn’t follow the formula, this movie takes you on a nauseating journey of Crowe’s misfortunes. He tries to get fake IDs and gets robbed and beaten in the process. He researches how to create a master key, and when he tries it in the prison as a test, it breaks, and he almost gets caught. Crowe leaves the prison and pukes in the front. As a viewer, you just keep hoping that Crowe will realize how stupid and risky it is. There are moments where you think maybe he will reconsider his plan. The temptress Olivia Wilde is introduced at a playground. She seems attracted to Crowe. You think maybe Crowe will be tempted and forget about his wife. Nope. To this point in the movie, Crowe has only done things on the periphery of illegality. He hasn’t crossed the point of no return. When he finds out that his wife will be transferred to another facility in 3 days, he becomes desperate as he doesn’t have the funds needed to do the escape. Liam Neeson’s character advised him he would need 5 years worth of cash on hand. And since the sale of his house hadn’t gone through yet, he only had enough money for a couple of weeks. Now Crowe is brought to the brink and you as the viewer are cringing again as he prepares to rob a bank. At the last moment, he changes his mind, and you breathe a sigh of relief. That is until you realize he is going to rob a meth lab instead. Now he is crossing the legal line, but you as the viewer must say that his crime is against criminals, is it still a crime. While robbing the meth lab, a gun battle ensues in which one man is shot dead and another is shot dead by his own gun. Crowe has committed murder. Do you offer an excuse because of his cause? As a viewer, you are uncomfortable with having to make that choice. With cash in hand, he begins the breakout, but now that there is a crime scene, the cops are hot on the trail. As I have given so much away, I will not give away the conclusion. But I do give it a two thumbs up for making me so darn nervous all the way through.

V for Vendetta Movie Review

2011-08-17T08:00:00.002-05:00

I’m not a big fan of super hero comic book movies. There are some exceptions, such as the novel approach taken in Unbreakable and Watchmen. V for Vendetta is also one of these movies. The importance of the movie is freedom, freedom from tyranny and from fear. The message of the movie is also about how you have to tolerate some freedoms you might not agree with yourself so that you can experience the ones that you do. For me, personally, I am willing to tolerate those freedoms because in doing so, I’m allowing God to be the judge and not myself. I’m allowing room for God in society. I don’t just like the movie for the message, I also liked Hugo Weaving’s character, V. He has a compelling voice just as he did in the Matrix. The supporting cast and plot also carried the movie well. Ultimately, V is inspiring to me in that it displays on screen the type of reaction I hope people show one day to the ever growing government big brother. I also like how John Hurt plays the Big Brother figure on the screen as a nod to his role as a man in fear of the big brother on the screen in 1984. I give this movie two knives up.

The Social Network Movie Review

2011-08-15T09:59:00.000-05:00

Timing is often the key in the success of a movie. Most frequently, timing is a key for a made for TV movie, where a TV studio capitalizes on the headline of the day to make some horrid idea of a movie. When I saw the previews for “The Social Network”, I must admit I felt the same way. Why would the director of the beloved Fight Club direct a headline movie. When it did well at the box office, I wasn’t surprised. Suckers, I thought. Then the academy awards came out and this movie received a nomination. I started asking people that saw it what they thought. It was a unanimous endorsement, so I decided to check it out.

As an avid facebooker, the subject matter immediately resonated with me. I was hooked within the first 5 minutes. The story of a future billionaire that builds his empire based on a break-up and disdain for row team members, is great. The portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg as a cold and calculating nerd of the new generation carried the movie. Justin Timberlake did a great job portraying the muse and former scorned Napster founder. As a synopsis, this movie covers the creation of facebook and the two concurrent lawsuits of the winklevoss twins, Harvard finishing club members that hired zuckerberg to create a Harvard only social network, and Eduardo Saverin, the co-founder and early financier of facebook. If this movie were a facebook page, I would like it and send it a friend request.

Flash Mobs and Hate Crimes

2011-08-11T09:44:00.000-05:00

I remember when a new term entered into our culture back during the days of Bill Clinton. Inspired by the “mostly dead” term used in The Princess Bride to further describe a concrete term, hate crimes are crimes that involve some sort of hate as a motivation, usually involving violence. It was really designed as a method to hold one race more accountable for violent crimes against another race wherein had the same crime been committed against a member of the same race, it would not rise to the level of the federal hate crime law. Additionally, the application of the hate crime law is intended, while not stated, to apply specifically to one single race. I realize the outdated intention of the law. Perhaps it could have been useful pre-1970, but being a person that doesn’t like to look at the issue based on race, I think the law is crazy. Truly, if one person attacks another person regardless of their racial make-up, there is some sort of hate involved. The act of violence implies hate.

Recently, we have seen a series of violent flash mobs, mostly involving black youths. At the state fair in Wisconsin a similar mob attacked fair goers as they left. Eye witnesses and victims stated that the mob specifically targeted white people. By the definition of the federal hate crimes law, this should be a slam dunk case, but not quite. Police have been falling all over themselves saying that it is impossible to ascertain whether there was a racial component involved in the crime without a confession of the fact by a perpetrator. That is both the most intelligent and ignorant statement to come out of law enforcement regarding federal hate crimes.

It is in intelligent in that without a confession, it is truly impossible to know whether or not race was a factor. It cannot be left to a jury to guess at the psychology of the criminal, nor can talk radio, internet, or other media do the same. Unfortunately, it is also an ignorant statement in that the police would even spend time figuring out whether or not it was a federal hate crime. If I were asked the question I would have said, “Of course it was a hate crime. These people savagely attacked innocent citizens. There has to be some sort of hate in their hearts, but I don’t care what the source of that hate is because that doesn’t change a single thing about the crime.” I would then proceed to prosecute the criminals for their violent crime. The last thing we need for race relations in this country is to tie the word “hate” to crimes so that now we are again forced to look at the race of people involved in crimes. Let’s end this racial thinking by ending hate crimes classification. God is not in heaven looking at our race to judge us and our sin, neither should we.

The Adjustment Bureau Movie Review

2011-08-10T08:00:00.000-05:00

The Adjustment bureau. This is a standard story of fate and love. In this case, a love so strong and meant to be that no matter what forces or risks come in its way, it cannot be stopped, even by the chairman. You have to watch this movie and suspend disbelief, not because you are asked to, but because you don’t want to deal with all of the holes in the plot. How about I ruin the movie for you and outline some of them. This story is about a senator to be that has a chance meeting with a woman in a bathroom while practicing his concession speech. She was meant by the forces upstairs to adjust the young senator into not giving up politics. She unknowingly succeeds, but their chemistry is so strong, a kink in the plan erupts. The plan is displayed by some sort of cryptic diagram on a notebook carried by caseworkers that fill in for angels. The rest of the movie is about trying to iron out the ripples caused by the woman and congressman’s encounter and its adverse impact on the chairman, we can assume God, plan. What is unique is that the caseworkers reveal themselves and their purpose to the congressman, rather than trying to play hide and seek. The only condition he had to uphold was to not mention their existence. For some reason, the chairman handicaps his angelic caseworkers by only allowing them to travel using a series of doors that transport them all over the city, so long as they have their hat on. I wonder how the chairman and caseworkers traveled and looked 2000 years ago. In the end, the congressman and woman come together despite facing their elimination, and pass the test. The test being that the chairman only allows those worthy of truly having free will. The rest of us go through life according to plan, nudged along the way by case workers. I didn’t turn it off, so two thumbs turned sideways.

Invictus Movie Review

2011-08-08T09:09:00.000-05:00

Invictus is a movie about forgiveness, something we are told to do by Jesus, something that God has done for us through Jesus, and something that we are always lacking in. Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for almost 3 decades by the ruling white minority in South Africa. He was the focal point in the movement to free the oppressed majority of native black south Africans. As Mandela put it in the movie, the practice of apartheid made South Africa the skunk of the world, and rightfully so. As a child, it seemed like such a strange and old practice to govern a country in such a way. To make a long story short, they finally freed Mandela and eventually made him President. It would have been easy for Mandela to use his new office as a means of exacting revenge on the minority white population. Who hasn’t done something similar in their own lives. But he knew that everyone would be looking to him to see how he handled his power, and he did it through forgiveness. If you remember after our own civil war, we attempted a policy of forgiveness with the South. We didn’t imprison generals like Robert E. Lee for all the men he killed, or Jefferson Davis for leading the South in rebellion (there were punishments handed out for mistreatment of prisoners such as those at Andersonville).

What Invictus does is tell the story about how Mandela used the sport of Rugby and the South African National Team, the springboks, as the focal point for walking out forgiveness. The black South Africans had long hated the symbol of white power, the springboks, and would root for the opposing team. It was a foregone conclusion that they would get rid of the team’s identity once they took power. Mandela took an odd and passionate interest in the success of the team, helping to inspire them to victory in the 1995 world cup over the famed New Zealand All Blacks, and more importantly, helping to inspire a nation to unify under the banner of forgiveness flown over a rugby field.

As a movie critic, I enjoyed the first 1.5 hours of the movie, seeing how people progressively got more comfortable with one another through the example Mandela showed. My one critique comes from the direction of the last Rugby match. Since most people have no idea how to play rugby, dragging out a match in which you have no idea if something is good or bad on the screen, and doing so in slow motion was poor direction and added unnecessary length to the movie. Over all, I give it two thumbs up on the basis of story.

Wittisims From Facebook

2011-08-05T08:00:00.000-05:00

I suppose if I were writing for the daily show, this might be how I would present the news.

NOTICE: The summer of recovery that began last summer will not be extended to employment, GDP, the stock market, liberty, or government deficits. Instead, it has been extended only to Gold and the debt ceiling.
Great stat I heard. Obama has had 37 fundraisers so far in his presidency. At this point in Bush's Presidency, he had 7, Clinton had 5. I guess the laser focus Obama has on creating jobs only extends to caterers for his fundraisers.
This is why I saw so many cell phones in the hands of the people in the soup kitchens during the 2008 election.
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/america-live/index.html#/v/1092711805001/cell-phone-a-civil-right/?playlist_id=87651
If Tea Partiers are terrorists, I would hate to see what Joe Biden and Harry Reid define as patriots.
I always wanted to take a vacation to the Mediterranean. With the economy the way it is, I didn't think I could afford it, but thanks to Obama and the Democrats, they are bringing Greece to me. And as an added bonus, they are also bringing Spain, Portugal, and Ireland. Thanks Barry and happy birthday
What would happen if on the show "hoarders", their solution was to raise the physical ceiling. The result would be more room for these people to bury themselves in. It is the same for us and our debt.
Being told the debt crisis was fixed is like being told your lawn was mowed while you were out of town, but came home to find 3 foot tall weeds
You know what this debt ceiling fix reminds me of? A Monty Python skit where a sick patient goes to the hospital with a serious condition, but the doctor is all non sense. The doctor does something like giving the patient a cookie and saying everything will be okay, but the patient says that's ridiculous and you get this whole struggle between nonsense and life and death.
We don't call a morgue "life counseling". Why do we call an abortion center "planned parenthood". The only thing people are planning is to be childless.
Here's a no brainer. Everyone on the left and in the media is up in arms about how much compromise there used to be and how it has all come to an end because of the republicans of today. Well, it seems to me that if everything up to this point was compromise, and we are 14 trillion in debt and facing a credit rating reduction, then maybe not compromising is the right approach.
The only money the democrats feel you can't do with less during these times is the money that is taken from one group of people and given to another. In the tradition of Orwell, some belts are tightened more than others.
Is it Liberty if one man is not free to prosper more than the other. Isn't liberty also the converse.
Just to dispel all doubts, here's a quote from our very own despot, despite his attempt to walk it back.
"The idea of doing things on my own is very tempting, I promise you, not just on immigration reform. But that's not how our system works. That's not how our democracy functions," Obama told the National Council of La Raza.
I read a story about how the UK has created 150 human animal hybrids over the last 3 years, in the name of science. And let's not forget embryonic stem cells. You know Joseph Mengele did experiments on people, in the name of science. What lengths are you willing to allow science to go in the name of a cure.
Obama and Pelosi talking about reducing the deficit is like OJ Simpson talking about looking for the real killer
What is the only industry that gets more and more money the worse they perform? Truly, they have found a way to tap into the capitalistic model of supply and demand. Education
I have a question for woman that graduated from high school 15 or more years ago and have recently lost enough weight that you can fit into the jeans you wore in high school. WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH OLD JEANS THAT YOU COULDN'T FIT INTO FOR THE LAST 15 OR MORE YEARS.
Listening to Obama talk about the economy is like GI's listening to Tokyo Rose talk about sweethearts at home.
40 is the new 20 according to a recent poll conducted on a group of 100 40 year olds

Gnomeo and Juliet Movie Review

2011-08-04T08:00:00.001-05:00

Gnomeo and Juliet is a G rated children’s movie. It is definitely one of the more mild children movies when it comes to adult content, which was good. The story is obvious. The classic telling of Romeo and Juliet told through lawn ornaments that come alive like Pixar’s Toys. I was surprised that they actually killed off Tybalt in this children’s movie, but hey, they are lawn ornaments. As an adult, I wanted to sleep through most of the movie, but found some parts novel and entertaining. My 7 year old thought the movie was weird, but entertaining. My 5 year old son was entertained, but my three youngest kids were not interested at all as the pace of the movie was slow and there was little action. It was also difficult to follow as they all spoke with English accents. I give the movie 1 thumb up and another thumb up if you are desperate.

Knight and Day Movie Review

2011-08-02T10:52:00.000-05:00

I am a highly critical movie watcher. However, when I’m asked to suspend all disbelief, I can do so. A spoof movie, done tastefully, is one of the few comedy formats I can tolerate. Knight and Day is just this type of movie. There will be no academy awards for best pictures, screenplay, directing, acting, or special effects, but that is okay. I was able to watch the movie with my wife and be entertained. This is the second Tom Cruise movie that Hollywood and box office said were horrible, but I still enjoyed. The first being the very good Valkyrie. Perhaps Hollywood has it in for Tom Cruise. (I loved his performance in Tropic Thunder). Anyway, Knight and Day is about a super spy with some skills that would make Napoleon Dynamite get a date to the dance or become student council president and an innocent girl on her way to her sister’s wedding. The two come together as Cruise plants something on Diaz to get it through customs at the airport. On the plane, Diaz flirts with Cruises character and excuses herself to the bathroom. While in the bathroom, Cruise fights all the passengers and crew that appear to have been there only to confront Diaz. When Diaz returns from the bathroom, she doesn’t notice Cruises handiwork. She proceeds to give him a kiss. He then very politely explains that the pilots are dead. She laughs at the ridiculousness of the statement, but then realizes something is indeed wrong when the cabin doors swing open and closed. Cruise then goes to the cabin and crash lands the plane in a field, drugs Diaz for her safety, and escapes. This is pretty much how the whole movie goes as the pairs feeling for each other continue to grow through far-fetched scene after far-fetched scene. But that was okay, because even the special effects were cheesy. For entertainment factor, this movie get two thumbs up.